Contamination concerns rise out of gas wellshttp://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1243355699
..."We're starting to see complaints by people that live in the area," said Geoffrey Thyne, a professor at Colorado School of Mines.
For years, Thyne has been studying the technique often used to remove gas from the ground.
It's called hydraulic fracturing, or fracing (pronounced "fracking"), and it involves injecting chemical-filled fluid thousands of feet below the surface, which expands existing fractures in the rock and allows gas to rise.
Allegations are now popping up across the country that fracing is contaminating groundwater and causing illnesses and environmental problems.
But Thyne says no one can prove a link because no one outside the oil and gas companies knows what chemicals are going into the ground.
"Without that knowledge, then there's always going to be some ambiguity or lack of positive assignment of responsibility," Thyne said.
The oil and gas industry won the right to keep their chemical mixture secret in 2005, when the government exempted fracing from the Safe Drinking Water Act.